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The Book Rebels
What happens when reading becomes illegal? Four kids, what seems like a boring summer, and a town where stories must be smuggled. Peter’s parents are in an unusually good mood — they’ve just booked a holiday in Plainton. It’s not too far away, it’s enjoyable but not unforgettable, and yes, there’s a beach… but it’s not particularly beautiful. Peter doesn’t understand.…
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Escape From Paradise
Genoa, the late 1950s. Lilli is the fifth of seven sisters, but she couldn’t be more different from them. A tomboy who doesn’t like following the rules, she feels suffocated inside the walls of her home. Everything changes the day Lilli meets Ida, a petty thief in the service of a mysterious woman named Salomè, and her gang of Strays. For…
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Iris Cloudsaway and the Tower of Dreams
Twelve-year-old Iris Cloudaway just found out that she can turn babysitters into piglets. Since her eccentric grandmother started talking again – from a photo on the wall – strange things have been happening. There’s something mysterious about her apartment building. Starting with the identical apartment building opposite the street, where Timo lives. They are not supposed to be friends, because…
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Olga
August 1943. In a transit camp in Germany, a voice calls out, “Olga Boldireva,” and from a corner of the barracks steps forward a thirteen-year-old Russian girl, with light hair and lifeless eyes. At that same moment, Hans, dressed in the uniform of the Hitler Youth, is on his way with his family to receive the state aid granted by…
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The Night of the Malombre
March 2, 1944. A freight train packed with desperate passengers departs Naples in the dead of night, heading for the Lucanian countryside, where food might still be found. On board are hundreds of civilians: smugglers, mothers, soldiers, children, and three teens who don’t know each other — yet. Brando, a boy forced to grow up too soon, climbs aboard to find…
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The You
Blu lives in a town on the shores of an Alpine lake. Nothing special ever happens there. Until one summer day, everything changes. A fisherman dies under mysterious circumstances. A woman hears her dead husband’s voice. Blu hears what sounds like her cousin’s voice, but it can’t be… he lives miles away and Blu’s phone is off… That’s how Blu meets Luka,…
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The Berlin Offside
Berlin, summer 1961. Every afternoon, in a small square in Berlin, eight kids gather to play their completely unofficial, and thus monumentally important, football tournament. Leo and his team are about to face their most important challenge: the final match that will decide who controls the square where all the Berlin boys, both from East and from West, usually play football. But…
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Hoopdriver
Billy Hoopdriver is thirteen years old and tired of being invisible. He lives with his father in a grey council house in Liverpool—just the two of them, locked in silence. His dad used to sell bikes, then worked as a delivery driver, but now he’s out of a job and barely speaks. Billy’s only real connection is with his grandfather,…
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Celeste’s War
Autumn 1944. In the woods of the Langhe, twelve-year-old Celeste and his little sister Flora, five, are playing Training, a survival game to prepare for the arrival of the enemy – and the enemy, they have always been taught, are the rebels who have gone up into the hills: the partisans. But nothing can prepare them for what they find…
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Even the Devil Gets Tired
When her grandmother tells her the story of the Devil’s Saddle, Efi cannot stop thinking about that poor devil alone, defeated by a horde of angels. So she asks her aunt, who studies flamingos, to go with her to the promontory overlooking the gulf of Cagliari, called the Devil’s Saddle, to learn his side of the story. There she meets…
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The Summer of My First Kiss (Maybe)
Three boys. One pact. Zero experience. A laugh-out-loud summer story about friendship, first crushes, and total humiliation. It’s the first day of the summer holidays, and Dado, Pippo, and Martino have sworn a solemn oath (sealed with spit and snot): before the end of the summer, all of them must kiss a girl. In order to prove the kiss really happened,…
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Uncle Cringe
Everyone has an Uncle Cringe. But Neve’s is the worst one of all. And this will be the most embarrassing trip of her whole life. Neve is certain of one thing in life: every family has an Uncle Cringe. And unfortunately, hers is the cringiest of all. Always over the top with unlikely jokes, embarrassing dancing and an obsession with…
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Hach3r
Raffaele is fifteen, a tech nerd with two passions: AI and Alina, the most intriguing girl at school. But while he’s fluent in programming, he’s hopeless when it comes to people. When he discovers Alina follows a social media group for aspiring writers, he joins and starts posting stories. They’re… not great. Until one day, something strange happens: a new story…
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Burn This Book. The kids who saved Dr Zhivago
Would you risk your life for a book? Three teenagers. three historical eras. One secret that could change history forever. Is it worth risking your life for a book? Boris Pasternak would say yes, that ideas are not born to be hidden or suffocated. And so would his publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who managed to publish Dr Zhivago, while avoiding censorship.…
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White Fog
A mysterious fog rising from the river and a girl destined for something more. A village shrouded in mist, where ghosts seem to rise from the river, the bell tower tolls through the air, and the memory of vanished children still lingers… As in many tales, there is a godmother and a girl destined for something greater. The past hides…
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The Cruel Sister
Agatha is 11 years old, lives in a grand but slightly crumbling English country house, and is certain of two things: she will be an explorer one day… and there is something very wrong with the new maid. It’s the early 1900s, and Agatha’s days are filled with books about Egypt, ancient tombs and strange diseases. Her father is always experimenting,…
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One Piece at a Time
Twelve-year-old Nina is curious, smart and full of questions — especially about the strange, half-written notebook she finds hidden in a forgotten corner of an old bookshop. Inside are disturbing sketches, unfinished formulas and fragments of thought that seem to reach across time. The only clue? A cryptic signature: “M.” Drawn into the mystery, Nina begins to suspect that the notebook…
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The Cursed Island
The fictional childhood adventure of a boy named Louis — one other than future writer Robert Louis Stevenson — set on a remote Scottish island in the mid-19th century. Frail in health but overflowing with imagination, Louis is forced to leave the comforts of Edinburgh when he follows his father, a lighthouse engineer, to a remote, sea- and wind-battered island. What…
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The Geometric Man
A fictionalised version of the young Jules Verne grows up in a world too small for his restless imagination. Spending a summer in a quiet French village, he stumbles upon a mysterious inventor and a locked shed full of blueprints, tools and machines unlike anything he’s ever seen. As Jules becomes the inventor’s apprentice, he finds himself drawn into a secret…
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The Greys
1986, Cavazza, province of Belluno. Population: 102. No roller coasters. No cinemas. No holiday camps. Just trees, mountains and a cabin in the woods. Angelo would give anything not to follow his eccentric father Pietro on another wild goose chase. But he’s thirteen – he has no choice. And this time the mission is… to hunt aliens. Pietro is convinced that they have…
MIDDLE-GRADE
